An Information centric network (ICN) is a network that allows applications to bind to application-centric identifiers (IDs) exposed to the network layer entity (ID can represent content, device, service, etc.), rather than to bind with one specific form of naming like an IP address that represents physical location where that data is to be retrieved from, named hosts.
In a regular host-centric network (for example, an Internet protocol (IP) network), data is exchanged based on one or more host addresses (for example, IP addresses). Packets are delivered based on an end-to-end principle from a source address to a destination address.
In an ICN, on the other hand, packets are exchanged based on the name of the content or data. A content-centric network (CCN) or named data network (NDN) is an example implementation of the ICN that permits fetching data identified by a given name. The potential benefits of ICN include content caching to reduce congestion and improve delivery speed, simpler configuration of network devices, and improved mobility support.